


Unati

by KitKatPurrpurr



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Alien Technology, Aliens, Angst, Body Horror, Corruption, DNA manipulation, F/M, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Jaguars, Lovers killing each other, Manipulation, Remorse, Robots, Shapeshifting, animal mauling, genetic manipulation, red heads, simulations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 01:43:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2048499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitKatPurrpurr/pseuds/KitKatPurrpurr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zeke rescuses Zoe, but as it turns out getting her back to entirely may not be as easy as they initially hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unati

                “Alright Kinzie, I’m going in.” Zeke headed towards The Broken Shillelagh, slowing from his super sprint to slide up right in front of the half-wall fence. CID materialized a few feet away to greet him.

                “Zeke, I do not think you understand what you are walking into.”

                “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Zeke frowned at the robot, shaking his head and turning to walk into the bar. The gateway had not yet opened up, to his surprise. CID quickly moved to block his path and stared at him. Somehow Zeke got the impression he was grimacing at him, even if all he had was an eye.

                “The gateway code to Zoe’s simulation prison was… different. There were two codes needed, instead of one, to open the gateway. The first one told me that she wasn’t being held in a pod like all of you were, nor was it one like Johnny’s.” He turned away from Zeke. “I cannot quite pinpoint exactly where she might be held, but I doubt getting her out of her simulation without harming her brain will be easy. While you go to save her, I will do my best to figure out her location.”

                Zeke eyed CID nervously. “What about that other code?” He figured it couldn’t hurt to ask, but he got the feeling CID didn’t want to tell him.

                CID floated further away but still remained within the fence. “I have no idea. But I will look into it.”

                Raising an eyebrow at the robot, Zeke glanced back at the doorway to see the familiar white gateway consuming the bar’s entrance. He had been able to handle saving all his friends except for Zoe so far, and had been preoccupied with taking out Zinyak that he had actually forgotten about her. Now that he knew she was in greater danger than even Johnny was, he felt that much worse about having not attempted to rescue her sooner. Though part of that was due to them being unable to find her, but an anonymous tip from a Zin with the codes to her simulation helped tremendously.

                Zeke shook his head and walked into the light, unsure of what he was going to see, but ready to help his friend escape her simulated hell.

—-

                “ _Mátalos!_ ” (“Kill them!”)

                Zeke heard gunfire ring out and quickly darted behind a stack of palates, looking around the area. He recognized the surroundings as the old Factories district in Stilwater, probably one of the grungiest and sketchiest parts of the city.

                “Ugh… fuckin’ Carnales,” he said, sighing.  _Now what could they have to do with Zoe?_ Zeke’s brow furrowed and he thought for only a moment before hitting himself in the head. _Dex_.

                Ah yes, the man who betrayed the Saints, broke Zoe’s heart, and nearly tried to take him out. Zeke had been tasked with taking him out a while back after he began targeting the new CEO of Ultor at the time, Eric Gryphon. As it turned out, Dex had been going behind Ultor’s back and bought and sold radioactive waste on the black market, and Gryphon wanted it to stop. Although the two succeeded in bringing down Dex’s operations, he still managed to skip town, and in an outrage at losing him, Zeke went after everyone Dex ever cared about at Ultor, and a few others.

                Zoe never could seem to get over him, even when he essentially dumped her and left for Ultor. In her despair at having lost her gang family, she clawed up her face and ended up with a permanent scar. But over the course of the several months after Zeke woke up and restarted the 3rd Street Saints, she seemed to feel better and quite often seemed to forget about him entirely.

                It wasn’t until Zeke shot Dex’s sister during his revenge rampage and then attempted to use Zoe’s funeral she held for her to lure Dex back that she finally snapped and left the Saints on her own accord. Zeke felt awful about the whole thing, realizing how badly he had manipulated Zoe just to try and fulfill a selfish desire, especially since the person he wanted to take out was someone she was deeply in love with. The reconciled over the following years and Zeke took Zoe’s feelings far more seriously from then on as a result.

                It would make complete sense for Dex to be part of her simulated nightmare, but what was setting hers apart from all the others? Zeke needed to know.

                Once the gunfire had ceased, he stood up and took off down the street, looking through alleyways to see if he could spot Zoe or Dex, but there was no sign of any of them. _Perhaps I went the wrong way?_  Zeke turned around and sprinted back the way he came. He could hear voices faintly in the distance when one of the voices turned into a bloodcurdling scream. His feet could not have carried him any faster as he ran towards the sound, but when his ears were met with a howling cackle-turned wailing sob, he quickly stopped and his eyes widened.  _What was that?_

                Shaking his head, Zeke resumed sprinting, but came to an abrupt halt when he rounded the corner and gazed upon the graphic scene that had unfolded only moments ago.

                Zoe was kneeling on the ground in her raggedy sweats and t-shirt, both of which were saturated with blood. She held what appeared to be Dex’s severed head in her arms and was sobbing into his hair, gripping it with her shaking fingers.

                “Why… why can’t I stop it? Why you, Dex? Why you?” She grabbed a nearby hand of his and opened the fingers to interlace them with hers, still holding the head in her other arm. As Zeke cautiously approached her, his stomach churned and he had to hold back the strong gag reflex that kicked in. Dex’s chest cavity had been ripped open and his whole lower half had been broken off from his spine, leaving his pelvis and legs mangled several feet away. His arms were also no longer attached; same for his head, and what was left of his ribcage was broken open. The intestines spilled out on the ground in the center of the bloody splatter on the ground, but probably the most disturbing part was how his heart was nestled in Zoe’s arm: the same one that held his head.

                Zoe barely moved her head when she heard Zeke approach her. “I… did this. I did this to him, Zeke. I always do. And I can never stop myself.” Zeke placed a hand on her shoulder.

                “You can’t help it. And it’s not your fault. This is a simulation built to-“

                Zoe batted him away. “You don’t fucking get it! I don’t care if this is a simulation, what happens to me is literally out of my control!!”

                Zeke rolled his eyes. “Uh, actually I do. Now can we please leave? I’m here to get you out of this hell.” He once again reached his hand out to help Zoe up from the ground when a booming voice echoed around them.

                “Oh please. You have absolutely no idea what’s going on with your dear feline friend here. For once perhaps listen to your friends.”

                 _Fucking Zinyak._ “What the fuck do you want now you pompous shit?” Zeke had absolutely no patience for the alien overlord this time and was ready to leave the gruesome surroundings he was in.

                Zinyak chuckled. “I do believe now is a good time to show your friend what we’ve been working on, wouldn’t you say Zoe?” Zoe’s eyes grew wide and she looked up at Zeke in horror.

                “No… no, no no no!! Zeke! Run away from here as fast as you can! Get out! Now!!” She stood up and pushed him away, turning to run. He followed her at a jog and she turned around to see him tailing her.

                “We’re bringing you back and that’s final!” Zeke grabbed her arm and she whipped around, slashing his chest with her other arm, causing him to release her and stumble back. Blood seeped from the fresh wounds and he winced, determined to be undeterred.

                As he moved to sprint towards her again, he froze. Zoe stopped running and moved her hands to her head, holding it while screaming. “AAAAAHHHH GET IT OUT OF ME!!!” She shook her head around violently while stumbling around, and Zeke got ready to grab her.

                “Boss!! Don’t get near her!!” Kinzie’s voice rang out throughout the simulation.

                “Fuck, not you too! What’s the deal anyway? Why can’t I grab her and go?” At this point, Zeke was beyond frustrated and his impatience was only worsening with time. He threw his arms to his side and looked up and around.

                “She’s not reading correctly. I’m picking up traces of both human, jaguar, and warden DNA in her biological code matrix. If we disconnect her now, she might suffer heavy brain damage. We need her to not be influenced by the warden DNA if we want to get her out of there. She was reading just fine a minute ago, but it wasn’t until her convulsions that it changed.”

                Zoe continued to shake and stagger around. Zeke could only look on in horror as his friend suffered through mental hell in front of him. “Right now she’s resisting it, but she won’t be able to much longer. I’ll look for a way to… stop whatever is making her like this.”

                A pained expression spread across Zeke’s face as he saw her collapse onto the ground, sobbing. “Zoe… just give into it! Don’t put yourself through the hell any longer!” Zeke called to her from a distance.  _Whatever the warden DNA is doing to her, it can’t be good._

                Her convulsions ceased and she pushed up from the ground, her eyes meeting Zeke’s. “I’m sorry Boss…” The words barely leaked from her mouth.

                The red in Zoe’s hair shifted to black and her irises shrunk until they were nonexistent, and the tattoos from her back spread over her whole body. The skin under her mouth began to twitch and squirm until it opened up, revealing a neon green mouth below her normal mouth, which had also turned green. Her feet stretched into her digitigrade toes, but the jaguar legs were all black, unlike her normal non-melanistic form.

                Zoe’s horrified expression turned to one of murderous glee. Both mouths grinned at Zeke in a way that chilled him to the bone and raised every hair on his body.

                “Boss?? Look, just avoid her. Don’t attack her, she’s actually quite fragile in that form, but just avoid her. Get away from her. It seems as though whatever pod she’s kept in is feeding her the warden DNA, and once I find a way to sever the connection,  she’ll turn back and we can disconnect her from the simulation.”

                “Just get it done Kinzie!” Zeke turned tail and ran for the nearest alleyway, not stopping to look back at Zoe. He heard the same chilling cackle from earlier, but this time it was approaching him. The sound of claws scraping against concrete echoed around the area and Zeke glanced back just in time to see the wild eyes only a mere foot from him, staring directly into his.

                “Ah fuck!!” He whipped around and slammed Zoe into the wall, knocking her senseless momentarily. “What did I say about attacking her??” Kinzie yelled. “Do you want her to be alive at the end of this or not??”

                “Just work Kinzie!! Lemmie deal with my shit!” Zeke shouted back at her and fled. He knew he couldn’t get far from her, and he didn’t want to have to resort to defending himself. His heart was pounding in his ears and he just hoped he wouldn’t hear the terrifying  _scritch scritch_  of claws.

                “Got it!!”

                Zeke turned around to see if Zoe was back to normal, but instead he saw a large black jaguar with both green mouths wide opened leaping at him. “Uh Kinzie!!! She’s gonna get me-“

_-CONNECTION ENDED-_

                Zeke nearly collapsed when the bars of his simulation chair released him. He was dripping in sweat and his heart was beating out of his chest, his vision spotty as he grabbed the nearest person to lean on. “Fuck me…”

                “It’s alright Boss. We got you.” Pierce’s voice soothed Zeke down almost instantly. He wasn’t still in Stilwater running from a mutated version of his friend; he was safe in real life on the ship. Shaundi and Pierce helped him to a chair, where he crossed his arms and rested his head, taking a breather.

                “You do realize you need to get out there and rescue her, right? The longer we wait, the worse off she’ll be, and considering what she’s been put through for god knows how long, I can only imagine what she’ll be up against when she breaks out.” Shaundi’s voice was full of concern as she placed a hand on Zeke’s shoulder. Johnny walked over to him and replaced Shaundi’s hand.

                “Fuck man, I am honestly glad we didn’t see what you saw. You’re the boss and if you couldn’t handle it, then I don’t think any of us could,” he spoke softly. “But Zoe needs you now, and if you don’t get her back, then everything both of you put yourselves through was for nothing.”

                Zeke closed his eyes and lifted his head up, sighing. “I know, I just… I needed a breather.”

                “I know where they were keeping Zoe.” CID floated into the room and approached Zeke. He opened his eyes and turned to face the robot. “…go on.”

                “It seems Zinyak had a testing lab, or rather hundreds of testing labs, for specimens he collected over the years, so he could see what he could learn about them and then use it to manipulate others. Using my limited knowledge on what he was doing with Zoe and perhaps some basic logic, it would seem as though he was preparing to break Zoe and then turn her into something that he could release into your simulation to make things far more difficult for you. But she did not break, surprisingly, especially considering your reaction to it, though she has still been influenced enough by the warden DNA to cause us problems. But we should worry about this after you pick her up though.”

                Zeke nodded. “Alright then. We need to get the ship near the testing labs and then I can take the robot suit to get her. How close are we to the labs, CID?” CID didn’t reply immediately. “About ten minutes of flying through the tunnel we haven’t gone through yet.” Nodding again, Zeke stood up and headed down to the cargo bay. “Let’s do it.”

—-

                Landing on the deck below, Zeke charged through the door using the robot suit’s rockets to blast it open. “Alright Kinzie, I’ll look for the room Zoe was in and then follow the trail of bodies until I find her. But stay close.”

                “Will do Boss,” she replied. Zeke gritted his teeth and continued on through the hallways. They were certainly different from the other areas of the ship he had seen. Each lab room contained a massive pod where different alien races were seen floating naked in the foul pink slime that kept them alive. One such room had a busted out door and the pod was shattered.  _Got you_.

                As Zeke ran along the walkway, he noticed a trail of mauled Zin dotting the path. She appeared to have run quite a ways, but as jaguar it probably took her no time at all. Reaching a wall, Zeke looked around to see the slime trail follow some claw marks up the wall to a few ledges. The gaps were small, but he was able to blast them open with ease and fly on up through them. As his head breached the final gap, he found himself assaulted by something directly in front of him. Zeke fell back onto a ledge behind him and he grabbed the figure on his face with both guns to throw it off of him. Now able to see, he noticed that it was Zoe, transformed normally and staggering around after her brief run in with the wall.

                “Zoe, it’s me!” Zeke yelled out to her. Zoe instantaneously shifted back and stood up, not caring that she was entirely exposed. “Finally! We gotta get out of here!” Shifting back, she leaped up onto the suit and took her place on his back and stood almost on top of the suit itself. Zeke made haste and floated back down into the hallway, shooting at the Zin that tried to block them off. “Thank god they didn’t send in the marauders or murderbots or you probably would have been fucked.”

                As they ran through the ship, Zeke called back to Kinzie. “Get ready with the ship! We’ll be there in less than a minute!!” He ran through the first hole he blasted earlier and shot up into the air, landing on the loading dock of the ship and allowing Zoe to leap off his back. The ship closed up and shot back through the Zin ship as Zeke got out of the suit. Shaundi and Pierce were waiting in the dock with a towel and a space suit for Zoe, and after handing both to her and waiting for her to dress, followed both Zoe and Zeke to the simulation room.

—-

                “So what’s the deal?” Zeke sat down in the chair across from Kinzie, Zoe by his side, while CID and a few other crew members stood nearby.

                “Well… it’s not exactly a great situation. Zoe had a lot of warden DNA pumped into her body, and so long as she has even a trace of it in her system, Zinyak can still manipulate her, though to a far lesser degree than before. See, the reason he had her hooked up to a machine that put it into her is because the DNA doesn’t like to mix with the human and jaguar DNA well, which has an adverse effect on her ability to be in simulations, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

                “The warden DNA wouldn’t replicate inside her body, which is fantastic news for us.” Kinzie looked over at Zoe. “When you shift into that monster form, it takes quite a lot of DNA to get into that form, but it also takes a considerable amount to maintain the form, since your body can’t replicate or reuse it. You’re currently laden with the DNA, but you will run out of it. The trick is you need to be shifted into that form to basically run yourself out of the DNA.”

                Kinzie turned to face Zeke again. “This is important for two reasons. One, because then Zinyak has no control over her, but two, it means she can join any simulation.” She sighed. “As of right now, Zoe can’t join any simulation.”

                Zeke’s eyebrow went up. “What do you mean?” CID floated closer to the group.

                “I have been researching the second code we received with Zoe’s access code. As it turns out, it is the download code for a patch that will allow her into any simulation we want. However, configuring the patch is tricky and it would be best if we only do it once to get the DNA out of her.”

                Kinzie spoke up again. “See, on a technical level, when Zinyak injected her with the warden DNA, it basically corrupted her normal code. She was put into the system initially and her body was given an ID that the system could read so when she entered various simulations, it would download the information for her base self in the simulation and upload it into the simulation. That’s why you were able to enter different simulations. Some have set limitations and presets on them, like the 50s simulation which altered your dress and personality, and the uploaded data adjusts to fit the requirements of the simulation.

                “Now when the warden DNA entered her body, it corrupted the data sequence as her DNA no longer read the same way it did before, so Zinyak created a patch so he could stick her into a simulated hell of her own. We need the same patch so we can stick her in our simulation, and then within that simulation we need to create a holding cell for her that she can’t break out of while she stays shifted to wear through the remaining DNA, which I calculated should only take five hours. And once we get all the DNA out, her ID will go back to the original one and she can join simulations like all of us can. But like I said earlier though, she’s fragile. The DNA can’t replicate so when she takes damage, the code doesn’t mesh right and can cause her to glitch out, and if she does, it could shock her physical body and permanently damage her brain.”

                Zoe tensed up and kneeled down. “Fuck… why’d I have to get stuck with the complicated shit?” Zeke chuckled. “It wasn’t your fault man. We’ll fix this, don’t worry.” He looked back up at Kinzie. “So how long will this patch take to download?”

                Kinzie bit her lip and looked away. “From where we are… a week.”

                Standing up, Zeke roared, “A WEEK??”

                Kinzie cowered a bit. “It’s a huge patch and we’ve got virtually no bandwidth out here. We’re gonna need to move closer to the center of the ship if we’re going to have any shot of downloading it faster. With CID’s help we can cloak the ship and get to a ship holding area near the center then stick the ship on standby mode while the patch downloads. We’d just have to stay off the bridge so no passing Zin see someone in a supposedly empty ship. The patch shouldn’t take longer than an hour, but we absolutely cannot be found. If we are, we’ll have to flee farther from the center and back out here.”

                Zeke shook his head. “Get it done, we leave now. CID, get to work on the cloaking part.”

                “Zeke, I must inform you that we cannot cloak the entire time. Cloaking in general will require some overclocking on the ship’s behalf, and seeing as I do not want all of us to explode, we will have to uncloak at various intervals to allow the ship to cool. I recommend stopping every 10 minutes and uncloaking for five to allow proper cooling.”

                “Again, just get it done.” Zeke headed for the bridge, Zoe tailing him closely. He could hear her speaking under her breath, “God I hope this works…”

—-

                “Alright everyone, the ship is going on standby. No one is allowed on the bridge, and excessive use of technical gadgets is forbidden. We don’t want to send out any signals that this ship is live,” Zeke sharply spoke as he walked about the ship. All the crew members headed down into the lower decks to kill the hour that they were going to be sitting near the middle of the Zin ship, and while some took up playing pool and others simply chatted or napped, Zoe and Zeke found themselves sitting together on Matt’s couch.

                Zeke looked up at Zoe and cocked his head to the side as he reclined back. “So I have to ask, what’s it like when you’re that beastly self? Not the regular jaguar one, but… you know.”

                Zoe’s face paled and she lowered her head. Zeke instantly dropped his joking demeanor and sat forward a bit. She swallowed and closed her eyes, and Zeke noticed her eyelids were fluttering as she shut them. As he opened his mouth to tell her she didn’t have to reply, she began to answer his question.

                “When the shift takes over, my vision goes black. For a brief moment I can’t see anything at all. But then…everything becomes this highly polarized black and white, like inverted black and white, and it’s all blurry…” Zoe inhaled slowly, her body shaking. “Except for the rose. Not a literal rose, I mean the color. I see something, some…shape, and it’s filled in with a rosy color. And my only goal is to get rid of it by tearing it apart. I see the rosy shape, and that’s when I attack it, and the moment I do, a bright red fills my senses and gives me a sort of ecstasy.”

                Zeke could see Zoe’s whole body quivering out of fear. “My main objective is to turn everything rosy into the sweet red I see and taste, yes taste. Once all the rose is gone from my vision, I lick up all the red I can.”

                A tear slid down Zoe’s cheek and she sniffled a bit.

                “I can’t tell you how many times I butchered Dex, Zeke. When you see someone you love so much disappear and become nothing but a target, only to find them torn to bits, bleeding in your hands and it’s all your fault… you… you just…” Zoe’s eyes glossed over and she leaned into Zeke’s arms, sobbing. He held her tightly and stroked her arms.

                “Shhh… it’s okay Zoe.” His heart ached for her and all she’d been through with Dex.

                “I’m nothing but a monster, Zeke… that’s all I ever will be…” she wailed into his chest.

                “No you’re not. Don’t tell yourself that. You’ve been manipulated by a lot of people your whole life and it’s not your fault. I’m sorry I was one of them.” Zeke wasn’t really sure what to say to her, but he didn’t want her feeling terrible.

                “It’s okay… thanks for trying to make me feel better though. Oh… and I’m sorry I attacked you in my simulation.” Zoe pulled away from him and cast her eyes to the side.

                “You really don’t need to apologize for that. It wasn’t you doing the string pulling.”

                Zoe moved away from Zeke to get herself more comfortable on the couch. “I’m glad we got to talk about things, but I’m really tired so I think I’m gonna try to take a nap if that’s okay,” Zoe said, yawning. Zeke chuckled.

                “Hey that’s fine. I’ll see what everyone else is up to.” Standing up from the couch, Zeke wandered over to see what Johnny was up to, while Zoe closed her eyes and envisioned Dex cuddled with her on the couch as she drifted off to sleep.


End file.
